Dialogical Practice

Meta-analytic study detects upsurge in patterns of perfectionism in young adults and explores how neoliberalism contributes to this trend.

For the last three years, I have been working with people, labeled "hoarders," who have become overwhelmed by their possessions in their homes. This has been some of the most interesting, challenging and thought-provoking work I have ever done. It is also an area that, I think, highlights all of the issues that challenge us in helping people who feel overwhelmed, for whatever reason.

A new review, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, examines the perspectives of clinicians and service-users on psychiatric diagnosis.

Children of parents who suffer from depression have a severely heightened risk of mental health problems, but new research points to several factors that seem to strengthen young peoples’ resilience and predict good mental health.

My opposition to psychiatric drugs is not just that they are harmful, dangerous, and destructive. That would be plenty motivation enough. And it is. But in addition, my profession, which I love and value, has been hijacked by the APA and Big Pharma. It is my goal to return psychiatry to its proper place - where good psychotherapy is understood to be the treatment for human suffering.

In a new report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius Pūras, calls for a move away from the biomedical model and “excessive use of psychotropic medicines.”

Sociocultural context, language, and sense-making process are among concepts that can help hearers and providers better understand the phenomenon of hearing voices

Day 3 of WNYC Only Human’s radio show, called Listen Up, focuses on the importance of listening with empathy. They interview Ken Feinberg, a mediator who met with victims after the September 11th attacks, the Sandy Hook shootings, and the Boston marathon bombing.

This result calls into question popular notions about the correlations between personality and later-life achievement and health outcomes.

Researchers distinguish between two different forms of perspective taking and examine their impact on helpers’ wellbeing.

Trauma-informed approaches have the potential to promote recovery but must involve survivors and service-users to prevent the experience of retraumatization within psychiatric and mental health services.

A pathbreaking new study out of Finland suggests that early intervention programs for youth experiencing psychotic-like symptoms may see the greatest improvement when treatment works within the home rather than in a hospital setting. The research, to be published in next month’s issue of Psychiatry Research, found greater improvement in functioning, depression, and hopelessness among teens in a new need-adapted Family and Community oriented Integrative Treatment Model (FCTM) program.

Can psychotherapy help dismantle oppression? “Social justice focused, analytic therapy- the kind of therapy I strive to do- is one that can support the...

Researchers find that yoga and controlled breathing reduced symptoms in individuals diagnosed with depression.

CBT forwards a hyper-rational perspective of human suffering that complements a managerialist culture of efficiency and institutionalization in the Western world.

In a guest blog for the Scientific American, Peter Kinderman takes on the “harmful myth” that our more distressing emotions can best be understood as symptoms of physical illnesses. “Our present approach to helping vulnerable people in acute emotional distress is severely hampered by old-fashioned, inhumane and fundamentally unscientific ideas about the nature and origins of mental health problems.”

A New York Times Op-Ed by Cornell psychiatry professor George Makari connects the surprise over the results of the widely-covered RAISE study to American psychiatry’s shift toward pharmacology and the oversimplification of disorders as brain diseases.

Coordinated care with employment support and family therapy leads to superior outcomes for those diagnosed with psychotic disorders.

New research suggests that more frequent in-person contact lessens the risk of depression in older adults. The study, published in this month’s issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, found that in Americans over fifty the more face-to-face contact they had with children, family and friends, the less likely they were to develop depressive symptoms.

A new training program teaches medical residents how to provide appropriate care and services to transgender clients.

For Psychology Today, David Elkins writes that “psychotherapy's power to heal lies mainly in its human and relational aspects,” rather than any specific techniques...

Researchers argue that a structural competency and social determinants of health approach must be made central to psychiatry training.

Over the past seven years, I have been teaching open dialogue principles and practices in a variety of settings. This blog will focus on the development of a training program, now based in Manhattan, and what I’ve learned from running this program and teaching this approach in the US.

Clinicians play a key role in empowering adolescents and their parents to make decisions about their mental health treatment.

Results of a large government-funded study call into question current drug heavy approaches to treating people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The study, which the New York Times called “by far the most rigorous trial to date conducted in the United States,” found that patients who received smaller doses of antipsychotic drugs with individual talk therapy, family training, and support for employment and education had a greater reduction in symptoms as well as increases in quality of life, and participation in work and school than those receiving the current standard of care.